Conferences are often conducted with multiple participants. A conference will typically include a number of different speakers throughout the duration of the conference. When attending a conference in person, a participant has the luxury of utilizing sensory information, including vision and the timbre effect of sound, to determine helpful information about the speaker. Unfortunately, face-to-face conferences are not always possible due to geographical or other constraints. Therefore, many conferences occur over communication systems, such as telephone systems configured for conference calling, or video conference systems.
Many communication systems are limited to transmitting single channel audio signals between users. Therefore, when conferences occur over typical communication systems, spatial reference is often lost through the single channel communication. It is often difficult to determine which participant is speaking during a conference call when multiple participants sound similar or when there are a large number of participants on the conference call. Accordingly, there is a continuing need to improve communication systems.